Charecters of Candida

Candida - Candida is Morell's wife and mother of their two young children. Shaw explains that "she possesses the double charm of youth and motherhood. Her ways are those of a woman who has found that she can always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so frankly and instinctively without the smallest scruple." She deeply loves her husband Morell, but is quite taken with Eugene Marchbanks' naïve, poetic nature

The Reverend James Mavor Morell - Morell is a mature man, well-established in life, and husband to Candida. He is a Christian Socialist and clergyman of the Church of England. Shaw describes him as "a vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and good-looking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound unaffected voice, which he uses with the clean athletic articulation of a practiced orator, and with a wide range and perfect command of expression."

Eugene Marchbanks - Shaw states that "he is a strange, shy youth of eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted and tormented expression and shrinking manner that shew the painful sensitive of very swift and acute apprehensiveness in youth." This young poet is madly in love with Candida, an affliction that torments him throughout the play.

Mr. Burgess - Shaw states that Candida's father has been "made coarse and sordid by the compulsory selfishness of petty commerce, and later on softened into sluggish bumptiousness by overfeeding and commercial success. He is a vulgar ignorant guzzling man." Burgess is a businessman always keeping an eye out for his own advancement.

The Reverend Alexander "Lexy" Mill - Lexy is a young curate chosen by Morell as his assistant. He is a well-intentioned, enthusiastic novice. He idolizes Morell, and tries to be just like him, and although he isn't very successful at it, he has won Morell over by his "doglike" devotion.

Miss Proserpine "Prossy" Garnett - Shaw tells us that she is "a brisk little woman of about 30, of the lower middle class... notably pert and quick of speech, and not very civil in her manner, but sensitive and affectionate." She is secretly in love with Morell, and jealous of how he constantly gushes over Candida.